housing, the new parks within the district itself, and also i think the fact that you're going to build a business center in this area which will attract a lot of new businesses there and the fact that northern california, the bay area has been the center of business technology of the world and many of these businesses have been either in san francisco or close to san francisco. i think this will allow more of these companies to locate a larger presence into san francisco and even if some of their detailed operations remain outside the city limits, almost all the support organizations for these companies such as their legal, their accounting, their advertising are located in san francisco and of course this would be another opportunity for more of a presence of companies where their workforce is, so those are some of the

benefits but i think in terms of the shadows, clearly the staff has done a magnificent job of presenting how demin mouse the shadow increases are and how the increase in new sunlight from the benefits of the plan will more than mitigate any increases. >> commissioner harrison? >> first of all, i would like to commend the committee for doing the work, the staff doing the work on this thing, showing the human beings out there with what with what they're doing in the like has a potential use son some of the parks, i think that's extraordinary work and thank you very much for that work. secondly, as mentioned in jeff's report about the six new parks that are being built down there or that are intended to be built, i'm very concerned and hope that when these discussions take place that

recreation and park staff and myself or any other commissioner that would like to be included in these discussions would be there. i would like to see this discussion go to not only who manages or maintains these parks but also the funding of them. i think a recreation and park is the choice place to put these parks for maintenance, so thank you. >> commissioner borden? >> there's a few questions for staff, so you mentioned that the project, the transit tower project was lowered from 1200 feet to 1050, what did that achieve in the shadow reduction? do you recall? and then secondary, at what height in general do you get a shadow from this building? i thought it would interesting to know. >> the reduction from 1200 to 1070, i don't have a

quantitative figure for you, it would reduce the portion of the transbay tower that would shadow justin herman tower particularly in that early afternoon time from sort of a solid and closed portion of the top of the tower to just the lattice architectural top and there's a substantial achievement, we haven't quantified it because the analysis was done after the building change was made. we did sort of a rough guide analysis that led to that conclusion without running the numbers before that. i do have -- let me grab a chart that can help answer your second question. >> great. >> if i could have the overhead.

this chart which was created by our eir consultants, it was not in the eir, but it was a very informative chart shows for each of the key sites that might shadow these various parks. what height they would need to be built at to have no shadows at all, what then is highlighted as the height for each building that would be sort of the lowest height or the maximum height above no parks would be shadowed by that building, you can see for the transit tower which is planned at 1070 feet, in order to not shadow any park at all, the building could not be over 500 feet tall, and that's driven by

portsmouth square, so you would have to allot 500 feet of the building, for justin herman center, that height is 842, the next tallest building, 51st street for 154 feet would need to be reduced by over 300 feet, and we have this information of the other various buildings. >> okay, i think that's very informative. the other is, can you talk a little more -- you mentioned section -- a section for shadows on non-rec and park departments and their shadow load parks and you secondarily mentioned 646 with shadows to

sculpt sidewalks, can you talk about that in case we chose to do a accumulative approval of the budget at this point? >> well, through the design process, we always in preparing them look at any potential impacts to non-rec park open spaces and engage with architects on ways to reduce the impacts to those spaces. it's not to achieve any particular quantitative specific targets but within the general practice of good design based on the zoning for the downtown, how can we balance these objectives so you would see that generally by the time you get o the commission, you would see the end time of a long process of working with the project sponsors so shape buildings to that end, but the commission can further require changes at that time or

approve the projects as proposed. >> i think it would be useful how the staff advice or the building sculpting was respective to each of these sections because i think that would help us guide in that conversation i think in looking at that, and then the other question i have in terms of updating the memo and you mentioned various criteria that was already preexisted that we would add to, i guess the one question we had, did we decide we wanted to stay away from looking at what's considered insignificant or adverse? i know the language is used in -- was used in the ballot measure and used to interpret how this was written but there's no real definition of those words and i just wanted to know if you had thought about that. >> there is no specific definition of those terms. i don't know if the city attorney wants to comment. >> so, we didn't want to bother

trying to -- >> that definition is up to the judgment of the commission. >> no, exactly, okay, well, thank you. i think it's very telling to look at the height that you would have to put the transit tower to not impact kind of the most impacted parks like st. mary's square, it basically says the tower in general is fairly infeasible if you went with an absolute no shadow load, it would be interesting and i thought it was be interesting to know what the shadow load was at the point where these sets were set in 1989 and i thought it was interesting that that original memo treated shadow load between 20 and 40% having the capability to observe more shadow. again, i'm not saying i know what the intent was of the writer's of the memo, i think one of the challenges is

clearly there's no standard at which it's set, is it a shadow load impact? we have this criteria time of year, shadow location, and based upon those judgments in what we've seen in the report, then we would judge it in that regard but obviously, you know, the other question is the overall cumulative shadow load not specific to this project, so can we say individual projects are of significant or adverse, probably not, the eir has to say that because there's no cumulative shadow limit, there's already a limit that exists so if you go over the limit, there is a significant adverse impact because that's the law but to the other extent of looking at that, there's no way to judge the difference between the two in that regard, so i would have to err on the side at looking at what the numbers were at each of these

individual shadows and then the cumulative shadows that we are looking at an insignificant impact and not adverse, you know, on their individual base is and their cumulative numbers. i think we also have to look at doing this as a whole entire process because i do believe that since the transit center project in the entirety and all the benefits that flow from it, the affordable housing, having high speed rail going down is all tied to the net number of what's yielded from this plan. i don't believe and it sounds like staff has con -- confirmed that we're not sculpting any further work on the project, we're approving on the abstract of what an absolute shadow limit could be based on what's been assessed on the overall heights of the existing lots. so, i think at the end of

redevelopment, we're in the position that we don't have the ability to come up with lots of new ways to create affordable housing and some of these other benefit and is we don't have some of the taxing mechanisms we've had in the past so i think to not figure out a way to support this project would not be advantageous, i know where we've made zoning for various things, if development doesn't happen, those improvements don't happen, so i know the two have to work in concert together. in terms of other projects not before us, i don't think we are in a position to make any decisions related to shadow on those projects and i think we would have to revisit whether or not the public good and benefit of those other projects because they don't have the

same public good and benefit that this project has would be able to be considered at the same time. >> thank you, let me make a couple of comments and i think this is a critical step for san francisco, i think it's the next step for san francisco, as supervisor wiener mentioned, we have some regional responsibility, not just for san francisco but to gain access for the city, i'm happy we took this process as a step to look at things from a 30 thousand foot level to look at it overall, i want to remind folks that the planning commission will have the ability to look at these projects individually to tailor them to maybe alter them in some way if there are impacts of sidewalks as was presented. i'm also happy that overall, the plan builds close to 6 thousand housing units, 1400 of which would be affordable and, you know, i love the idea we're

using technology and to craft this building from 1200 feet to 1070 feet, i'm hoping we're able to use this technology for other future projects and see how the impact -- the rest of the city on the ground. those are my comments. commissioner wu? >> thank you. so, i agree with some of the comments from other commissioners around the public good in terms of transit infrastructure, open space, especially the 30% affordable housing that's going to be achieved in the former redevelopment area, i appreciate ms. moss's comments in looking at shadows, we should be looking at the people they're impacting so i am happy to see the staff went out to do the site visits but i think some of the characteristics of the parks were slightly off, i know there's capacity limits but i think repeated visits to

parks shows that sports courts might be used for exercise or people may con ge -- congregate on them, they get used in multiple different ways. so, to that end, i want to talk a little bit about the impact fees. i wanted to understand better how the different impact fees are allocated from the projects and then also -- maybe i could ask staff to answer that question first. >> good afternoon, commissioners, adam from the planning department, i manage our plan implementation work which occurs after we adopt our neighborhood plans and our team also chairs the inner agency plan implementation committee which josh alluded to earlier, so commissioner wu, just to sort of describe the general

process and maybe you can help me specify specifically what you're looking for, what we do essentially is program the impact fees and the [inaudible] works with all the different act sis that are involved in the implementation of the projects that are identified in the community infrastructure plans from all of our different area plans and the newest most recently adopted one being the transit center district plan and then annually, we report to the planning commission and the capital planning committee and the board of supervisors, and what happens is based on the allocations that are projected in those spreadsheets for each of the different area plans, the agencies will put into their budgets allocations for that specific line item and then draw down as it comes in and what it essentially is, is

a cash flow exercise looking at criteria such as priority projects, leveraging of other funding sources, timing of grants or other federal or state funding sources, etc., and so we work with the different agencies to figure that out for each plan area. we start out projecting the fee revenue that we expect over time, over a five year period to start with and that's based on the pipeline of projects that we know about that have submitted applications to the department and then projecting the timing of when we would expect them to pay their fees based on the size and scale of the project and sort of how far along they are in the process, and projects generally pay -- at this point with the fee deferral point, projects pay 20% of their fees and the balance at the occupancy, so we can project out generally when

we expect those fees to come in, get a sum for each year and then based on that sum, work with the other departments to figure out what the best years are for specific projects, specific infrastructure projects to allocate the funding to those projects and it may be over years, it may be a certain amount of funding that comes for a design for open space in one year with the expectation that takes a year or two and a couple of years out, the balance for the construction of that part, so that's the exercise we go through working with the specific implementation department. >> okay, thank you, that's very helpful. so, i think then taking that information, what i would like to do is propose to the commission that we think of a way to prioritize the most highly impacted, most high needs area and in particular, i'm thinking of the chinatown parks, portsmouth square, the

other ones on the list, so i'm wondering if staff can help direct me if we can do that possibly through a resolution or if there's another process that we can do that with. >> joshua switzky, planning staff, you could adopt a resolution amending the implementation document to add some language regarding priority for chinatown parks or other aspects of the project for early investment from initial impact fees, so you could do that and we could put that on the calendar. >> okay, thank you, that is my intent, that is something i'm interested in, curious to hear what other commissioners would have to say about that. >> commissioner sugaya? >> yes, a couple of questions to staff. the transit center district plan area is larger than the

redevelopment area, so it's only within the redevelopment area that certain [inaudible] from the development apply, is that correct? for example, commissioner wu, i think commissioner wu was saying that there was a higher affordable housing component, and that's associated with the redevelopment area, is that correct? >> that's correct. if i can get the slide up there, if i could put the map up to clarify. so, you can see the plan area is the more purely rectangular broader plan area of market street to folsom, the redevelopment area, you can see it on your screens in front of you better is a more regularly

shaped subset, it occupies 2/3s of the planning area, all of the housing is within the redevelopment area, we do expect some units to be built outside of the redevelopment area, you know, maybe as much as as about a thousand units but most of the units are within the redevelopment area and regardless of whether built on private parcels or public parcels in the redevelopment area, it has a 35% affordable requirement, so you are correct in that. >> okay, thank you. >> and basically then, most of the proposed increases in height, as i remember as part of the plan, are within the redevelopment area itself? the majority of it? >> some of them are and some of them aren't, the redevelopment area runs in the middle of mission street so the transbay tower and some of the other sites are within the redevelopment area, some fall out of that area. >> and then another question,

with respect to section 295, there's a section that refers to future parks that rec and park may require, and i remember this came up in one other issue that had shadows and that park had not been part of the city family at this point, but was slated to be given or purchased or something and would eventually end up in the hands of recreation and parks. in this case, we have a number of open spaces that are being shown to us as a benefit, potential benefit of the transit district center plan, one of which is the elevated park. i assume the elevated park is private, so it's not affected by this particular ordinance.

>> the city park is owned by the public agency but it would not be subject to 295, you're right. >> and is that the other parks that are -- the ones that are paralleling some ramps and there's an east/west strip -- >> if i can put that chart up. >> are those also not subject because they're not going to be acquired by rec park. >> none of the 12 and a half acre that is proposed is currently planned to be rec park jurisdiction property they're going to be under the suck is -- successor to have redevelopment, that said, there is a possibility for the rec park to have a role in them but there are no formal plans to transfer ownership and jurisdiction to the rec park

department, so you're correct, none of them would be subject to section 295. >> okay, and then the last question which i think everybody knows the answer to, is that -- if the commissions don't approve cumulative limits on this comprehensive basis, it has no effect on the plan, is that correct? >> can you restate your question. >> there is before us a -- 9 or whatever parks which we are going to be considering cumulatively to raise the shadow limits, however, if we didn't take that action, there would be in effect on the transit district center plan, is that right? they would still all have to come back individually for consideration? >> well, for all of the buildings that would have an impact on parks that have budgets that are generally less than the impacts, the budgets would need to be raised for

projects to move forward, that includes the transbay tower that is before you today, two of the parks don't have budgets, but the major buildings in the plan area, the transbay tower included affect multiple parks so to not change them for some parks and other parks would not allow even -- >> i'm not saying that, i'm saying if the comprehensive approach wasn't adopted for example, then each individual project would still come back to us? >> for a joint hearing just like this. >> yes. >> that's correct. >> thanks. >> commissioner moore? >> mr. switzky, would you mind answering a question i have, obviously we are here to talk about the impact of shadow on parks which falls under the

definition of parkay in -- prop k in 295, do you have an open game board for everybody, other than the people who were inside the transit district, did you model shadows for the mexican museum, the museum of modern art, the expansion of mosconi, a residential development contemplated in chinatown, a new project proposed at this moment in the central corridor plan area, etc., taking like a bigger more comprehensive look at all other potential shadow impacts in order for us to have a slightly better understanding? the transit tower, there is a clear response on your part, however, the 12 others are basically as you call them shadow outlines and it's very

difficult to judge anything now just based on an outline, it is like a ghost, although i understand that your tools are indeed accurate and allow you to see certain things. my question is, there are certain projects like the mexican museum as the gentleman thought would be discussed here today which you could have taken in a broader hypothetical study, have you done that and have you just not put that in today's discussion. >> the analysis which is in the eir is a cumulative analysis of all potential buildings that are on file that might shadow any of the parks that are under sdrution and the only building that falls outside the plan area that meets those conditions would be the 707 mission project. the central corridor is in its

early phases of planning and within that, i don't believe anything that's been contemplating which is deep south of market would have any impacts on any of the parks that are under discussion today. i don't believe that the expansion would impact any of the parks under discussion today, but the analysis that was in the air was it was a cumulative analysis, it cast a wide net and looked to capture everything that was on file that might affect the parks that are under discussion. >> thank you. >> commissioner hillis? >> you show the cfd's provide about 15 million dollars of funding. what properties are participating in that cfd, is it a requirement? >> so, the cfd, the community facilities district is a requirement of all projects in the plan area that build in

excess of 9-1far on the site, so all the buildings in the plan area, all the large ones would be required to participate. >> okay. >> and then the shade calculations that are done, is there a time in the morning and in the evening before sunset or after -- sorry, after sun rise or before sunset that we start to calculate or is it -- >> yes, prop k, section 295 sets the limits at one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset. >> and this cumulative -- i think we should take this up as a cumulative matter because the plan was cumulative and it comes with all the benefits of the plan. it seems it would be analogous to raising -- not raising the height limits during the plan and doing the height limits case by case. i think it makes sense in this case where we've planned for

the transbay area to make that plan feasible by making changes to the shadow limits but i want to get at this issue of how we ensure that the changes we're making are for transbay and not, you know, other projects can kind of take advantage of those increases. >> well, the two ways are part of the qualitative criteria that accompany the budgets and again the first one is that the description of the shadows that could be found to be non-adverse and are within the budgets are that profiles of the shadows, the time of day, location in the park, the time of year, the extent on the park, that matches the analysis that was done for these buildings, so it is -- essentially it is for the plan area and